30 August 2021

Newsletter Articles

OUR MISSION, VISION AND VALUES

Our Mission

Our mission is to foster academic and creative excellence in a respectful and nurturing educational environment. We strive to support student wellbeing and provide meaningful learning experiences that develop socially responsible and resilient life-long learners. Through collaboration and leadership, our students will engage in, and contribute to the community, both locally and globally.

Our Vision

At Pinnacle College, we celebrate diversity and uniqueness in an innovative and inclusive learning environment. Our vision is to equip students with the confidence and skills to reach their potential and meet the challenges of the future as global citizens, leaders and innovators.

Principal’s Message

Dear Parents and Caregivers

May I start this edition of our newsletter for, once again, thanking our parents and the wider Pinnacle College community for their ongoing support of our school and staff as we continue to adapt to the unstable Covid Pandemic conditions. Your support is always valued. As we started Term 3 with the COVID reality, and due to the unstable situations of COVID-19 restrictions and regulations, unfortunately, we have stopped allowing parents to enter school grounds.

We have started the term with a statewise lockdown, but it did not take long!. As a result of current COVID protocols, which are implemented across the country, there are still a lot of restrictions taking place.

1. All excursions, incursions and on school ground activities have already started.
2. Year 8 and above chorts must wear facial masks inside of the classrooms except Physical Education lessons. During recess and lunch time, a mask is not required outside of any building.

As Pinnacle College, we are well-prepared for any unprecedented situation at the moment. Remote learning policy has been reviewed and if any lockdown occurs, students from year 7 to 12 will undertake live-online lessons with their teachers.

We had a very successful fundraising event on Red Nose Day. Red nose day is for Australians to get silly and fundraise to help save little lives and support families. Every dollar raised on Red Nose Day helps families get the support they need.

Also, the Community Engagement Team and SRC students joined the National Tree Day event organised by Friends of Dry Creek Trail. More than 80 Pinnacle College Community members attended this great event last week. This was a wonderful opportunity for the community and families of Adelaide to not only work together but to also contribute to the environment.

Furthermore, the Pastoral care department is organising a Sleep out program for students to encourage students and teachers to gain a deeper understanding of homelessness, raise awareness of the realities faced by people experiencing homelessness and raise funds to support Vinnies homeless services in the local community.

Take care and Stay safe

Till next issue

Educationally yours,

Gokhan Kot
Elizabeth Campus Principal, Pinnacle College

Community Hub News

Community Hub is back in full swing. Playgroup, English classes, Cooking and Zumba! Our Parenting workshops will begin on the 26th of August. These sessions will cover connecting with children, managing emotions, children behaviour and much more. Covid-19 restrictions apply; bookings are essential for all hub sessions.

Counselling

Dear Parents and Caregivers,

Whether your child is in Foundation or Year 12 there will undoubtedly be some conversation around future planning and career aspirations throughout the schooling year. Currently our Year 12 students are in the process of considering their SATAC applications and Uni preferences for 2022 and beyond. While this can be an exciting time, it is also quite daunting. This article is aimed at providing some helpful information and tips on how you can interact with your child in relation to potential employment pathways. At the end of the day, education as an institution is aimed at empowering and equipping our youth with the skills to one day become contributing members of society.

It is quite common for students not to know what they want to do in the future. Many will have a rough idea but this is generally constructed based on interactions with family, friends and role models (extrinsic motivation). Students struggle with intrinsic motivation, which is generally attributed to a lack of knowledge in particular careers.

So what does this mean for the student, their family and the school’s approach to career development?

No guidance is unhelpful and leaving the choice solely to a student may cause more anguish than intended. Simply picking careers that showcase success through a societal lens such as medicine, engineering or law etc. is also unhelpful as students will simply see the label. Don’t get me wrong, setting high expectations is absolutely crucial in observing a student's continued growth and development but an informed decision will reduce heartache down the track.

Research suggests taking a strengths based approach to a student’s career planning by focusing on interests which support self-directed inquiry based learning and what they excel in will increase a student’s performance. Of course you need to consider job prospects and sustainability in an ever changing world but this awareness will assist with planning.

“If you judge a fish’s ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life thinking it is not good enough.”

So what this means for the school and the family. Have regular conversations with your students on what their interests may be and find ways to replicate real world working scenarios to give your child a taste of what knowledge application may look like. Trial and error still seems to be the go to approach for career development. If you have any questions in relation to career planning, feel free to get in contact with one of our counsellors or our career advisor.

Kind regards,
Mehmet Kavlakoglu

Library

This term is very exciting. Week 5 was Science Week and there were lots of Science related activities in the library for students to explore. We had Kylie Covark, author of ‘Does it Sink or Does it Float’ read to the reception to year 2s. James Preston, showed years 3-6 lots of interesting science experiments. I hope this gets them excited about studying science.

Week 6 is Book Week, this is always an exciting time. Children’s Book Council of Australia each year brings children and books together to celebrate Book Week. The Shortlisted books have been out for a few months, the winners of the Book of Year awards will be announced on Friday 20th August. Please encourage your students to read these amazing books. This year’s theme is ‘Old Worlds, New Worlds, Other Worlds’. In the library we have been reading books in the library with this theme. Friday 27th August is the Book Week parade, where students have the chance to dress up and parade in front of the students. It would be great if costumes were more creative and individualized. Have fun and enjoy the day.

Keep reading

Mrs Lisa Preston
Librarian

“Reading is essential for those who seek to rise above the ordinary.” - Jim Rohn

Front Office Notices

Primary

Foundation

Last week as part of our “People Who Help Us’ topic Miss B came to talk to us about what a nurse does. She bandaged some of us and then we tried on each other. We had so much fun!

Year 2

For Science Week this term we were lucky enough to have the author Kylie Covark come in and do some experiments for us based on her book ‘Sink or Float?’ We also spent some time in the library looking at all the different scientific objects which was super fun.

‘I liked the experiment when the mixtures went together’ - Furqan
‘The moon that changes colour was cool’ – Sumayya
‘I liked seeing the mandarin float with the skin and sink without the skin.’ – Aayan
‘The magnets were very cool because I like magnets’ - Natasha

Year 3

Hi everyone! Our names are Maqsuda and Mohamad and we will be talking about our term so far in the year 3 class. Firstly, we have been learning about Day and Night and it is really fun. Today, we did an investigation on shadows and what happens when we track it throughout the day! In English, we have been learning how to write AMAZING poems. We wrote some rhyming poems about ice cream flavours, a free verse poem about a magical box and free choice cinquain poems. Yesterday, we went to a science incursion for Science Week and we got to do some cool experiments like popping a balloon underwater and balancing bricks on top of eggs. For Art, we drew our own version of Van Gogh’s Starry Night and we had so much fun! We are looking forward to going on our class excursion to The Planetarium tomorrow and we can't wait!

Year 4

Dear Parents and Caregivers,

We have had such a fun term thus far! During Literacy, we have been looking at narrative texts. The students in year 4 have been loving the creative component to this unit and I have thoroughly enjoyed reading their texts! We have specifically looked at ‘sizzling starts,’ vocabulary and utilising a variety of sentence structures.

Mathematics has been hands-on and engaging as we delved into the areas of symmetry, volume/capacity and time questions.

I look forward to seeing all the wonderful Book Week costumes next week!

Keep up the amazing work with your children at home. A friendly reminder that readers and comprehension questions should be done nightly :)

Miss Rowlands

Year 5

During this week in Year 5, our focus has been preparing for Naplan as we have been sitting our Naplan tests. We have worked extra hard on practicing our reading comprehension skills and our problem solving skills. During Maths, we began a new topic, focusing on the Area of rectangles and other shapes. We have also conducted science experiments to explore how light travels through transparent, translucent and opaque objects. For some fun, we began planning our technology projects where we are required to make arcade games.

Year 5 Team and Miss Marcoionni

Year 6

This term in HASS, we are studying Civics and Citizenship. We have been learning about the important people and processes to Australia’s democracy. In Week 4, we studied the members of Australia’s cabinet and created a ‘Fakebook’ account for one member of the cabinet. We researched their portfolio, what services they are responsible for and their biggest achievements.

Art

PRIMARY

In Term 3, Year 6 students focus on a range of abstract art projects based on early Modern and Indigenous Australian artists’ works. Year 5 students started the term by focusing on how an indigenous artist uses nature in getting in touch with childhood memories.

The South Australian Living Artists (SALA) Festival is a statewide, open-access visual arts festival which takes place during August in South Australia. This year Pinnacle College is among contributing schools with a virtual art gallery that consists of 48 upper primary, secondary and SACE student works from 2019 to 2021. You can visit the gallery via this link below:

Arabic

Asslamoalekum, Dear parents and Guardians,

My standard students have shown a great start to term 3. They really enjoyed learning letters, Arabic sounds, colors, family members and fruits through interactive games, flash cards and other activities that motivate students with keen participation and create a good learning attitude.

Regards,
Yasmin Aly
Arabic teacher

Secondary

Art

This term, Year 7 students are working on Cultural Masks and Year 8 students will be learning about Digital Photography. Students launched their projects despite lockdown delays.

The South Australian Living Artists (SALA) Festival is a statewide, open-access visual arts festival which takes place during August in South Australia. This year Pinnacle College is among contributing schools with a virtual art gallery that consists of 48 upper primary, secondary and SACE student works from 2019 to 2021. You can visit the gallery via this link below:

Arabic

Year 7&8

Students practice types of plural sound masculine plural جمع مذكر السالم sound feminine plural جمع مؤنث السالم and the mixed plural جمع التكسير which does not have specific pattern. They were also reading more examples of demonstrative pronouns for masculine and feminine of this, that and plural of both in sentences that describe humans and non-humans alike هذا /هذه/ هؤلاء/ ذلك /تلك . The class are also constructing verbs from third person singular, dual and plural to second person singular, dual and plural هو /هي/ هما/ هم/هن/ أتت/ أنت/أنتظار/أنتم/أنتن / أنا/نحن . The construction of the verbs will help students to create their own text and communicate effectively.

English

The English Department has been working with Year 9 for the You Debate 2021 competition (AUF). Our public speaker, Ahmed Aly, learnt much from the experience while our debating team - Asir Shaikh, Khaled El-Kaissi, Reyan Muhammad - have won all three debates in the first round, caming top of the table. We wish best of luck next week for the quarterfinals!

PE

Pinnacle College WIns Bachar Houli Cup

Bachar Houli Cup

Following on from the Open girls Winning this year's AFL Power Intercultural Cup, our Primary/Middle Elizabeth East Campus Boys have recently won the first ever Bachar Houli Cup held in Adelaide. Congratulations not only to the boys, but also the girls who unfortunately lost the Grand Final by 3 points, finishing second on the day. Named after Richmond Premiership player and devout Muslim, Bachar Houli, the 14 team carnival provided the students opportunities to get a taste of playing footy in a safe,competitive environment. All students were given an Islamically decorated footy as a commemorative gift. When we take into consideration football being a relatively new sport to our school and culture, 2 x Winners this year from our school makes me wonder; maybe we are a footy school?!

We look forward to defending our title next year!

Michael Triantafilakis

Humanities

Year 12 Society and Culture

Last Wednesday, our Year-12 group delivered a presentation to the Year-8s to raise awareness about the achievements and hardships of refugees in our community. We interviewed a representative from the Australian Migration Centre (AMRC) to share his experience with the students. Along with that, we provided the students custom wristbands and brochures.

Science

This year for Science Week, the secondary campuses joined to compete and win prizes at a Science and Sports Fun Quiz Bonanza. The year 7 & 8s came together at the Golden Grove Campus while the 9 & 10s came together at Elizabeth Campus. They created their team name which had to include a teacher’s name, an adjective, a school subject and an animal.

They answered questions such as:

Who developed the modern binomial classification of living things?

Who won the most gold medals for Australia at the 2020/1 Olympic Games?

Pastoral Care

On September 24, Pinnacle College students and teachers will come together at a sleepout to raise funds and awareness for the most vulnerable people in our local community. At this sleepout, comfy beds and home cooked meals will be swapped for cardboard and a night without the creature comforts of home.

If you would like to help us to reach our $1500 goal, you can donate through the link below:

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